Author Biography

Martha Shearer is Assistant Professor and Ad Astra Fellow in Film Studies at University College Dublin, Ireland. She is the author of New York City and the Hollywood Musical: Dancing in the Streets (2016). Her work on the musical has also been published in Screen, The Soundtrack, and The Oxford Handbook of Musical Theatre Screen Adaptations (2019).Julie Lobalzo Wrightis an Assistant Professor in Film and Television Studies at the University of Warwick, UK. She is the author of Crossover Stardom: Male Popular Music Stars in American Cinema (2018), co-editor with Lucy Bolton of Lasting Screen Stars: Images that Fade and Personas that Endure (2016), and has published research on stardom and musical/music films in various edited collections and in the journals Celebrity Studies and Film/Philosophy.

Table of Contents

List of FiguresAcknowledgements1. Introduction: Genre Panic at the MarginsJulie Lobalzo Wright and Martha ShearerGeneric boundaries2. Danceploitation, Musical Disruption, and Synergy in Saturday Night Fever, Flashdance, and Breakin'Jenny Oyallon-Koloski3. Pitching Utopia: Popular Music, Community, and Neoliberalism in the Choir FilmEleonora Sammartino4. E-Q-U-I-T-Y: Generic Boundaries, Gender, and Real Estate in the Magic Mike FilmsMartha Shearer5. Saint-Louis Blues: From Oral Storytelling to Aural FilmmakingEstrella Sendra FernándezMusicals of the margins6. The Marseille Film OperettaMarie Cadalanu and Phil Powrie7. Heteroglossia in the Musical Number: Song, Music Performance, and Marginalised Identity in Tony Gatlif's Swing (2002)Tamsin Graves8. Sexsationalist Feminism in The Devil's Carnival Project (2012, 2015)Joana Rita RamalhoMusical sequences9. The On- and Off-Screen Politics of Sophia Loren's Musical Performances in Houseboat (1958) and It Started in Naples (1960)Sarah Culhane10. 'Just a Little Warm-Up for the Job': Harold Nicholas, the Specialty Act, and the Hollywood Song-and-Dance ManKate Saccone11. A Language of its Own: Mani Ratnam's Experiments with the Song SceneAakshi MagazineMusic12. Pianos, Affect and MemoryPaul Mazey and Sarah Street13. Everybody Wants to Be a Cat: Jazz Culture and Disney Animation in the 1960sLandon Palmer14. Short-Form Pop Music Films in 1960s BritainRichard Farmer15. "Good Evening Pasadena!": Fantastical Performance Spaces in the Rock DocumentaryRichard WallaceMusicals across media16. Live Musical Spectaculars: Eventizing Network Television in the Post-Network AgeAnthony Enns17. Camp and the Celebration of the Popular Song in RuPaul's Drag Race "Lip Sync for Your Life"Julie Lobalzo WrightList of ContributorsIndex

Review

Richly referenced and meticulously edited, Musicals at the Margins is an essential book in cinema scholarship and will surely lead to wider conversations and more specific studies in the future. * Lou Reviews Blog *
Harnessing a mixture of critical insight and knowledge as dazzling as the musical itself, Julie Lobalzo Wright and Martha Shearer have brought together a diverse group of writers to define and redefine musical films beyond the familiar canon. This superbly revealing collection offers entirely new perspectives on the boundaries of a genre that has often left scholars bewitched, bothered and bewildered. * Dominic McHugh, Professor in Musicology, University of Sheffield, UK *
Musicals at the Margins covers a wide range of musical texts existing on the borders of the genre, expanding and complicating how musical texts make meaning as musicals. The anthology's remarkable selection of scholars examines generic outliers—like rockumentaries, dance-focused films, televised lip-synching contests, Bollywood "song picturization," and short-form pop music film—demonstrating how methodologies developed by canonical musical scholars like Rick Altman and Jane Feuer continue to inform contemporary scholarship. As the boundaries between genres, media platforms, and audiences become increasingly difficult to parse, Shearer and Wright's collection is a much-needed addition to the existing literature on the musical, and the field of genre theory as a whole. * Amanda Ann Klein, Associate Professor of Film Studies, East Carolina University, USA *

Promotional

Explores the films and media texts, cycles, and sequences situated at the margins and boundaries of the musical genre across a range of media, time periods, and global contexts, illustrating a need for a broader and more flexible approach to both this specific genre and film genres in general.

Review Quote

"Harnessing a mixture of critical insight and knowledge as dazzling as the musical itself, Julie Lobalzo Wright and Martha Shearer have brought together a diverse group of writers to define and redefine musical films beyond the familiar canon. This superbly revealing collection offers entirely new perspectives on the boundaries of a genre that has often left scholars bewitched, bothered and bewildered." -- Dominic McHugh, Professor in Musicology, University of Sheffield, UK " Musicals at the Margins covers a wide range of musical texts existing on the borders of the genre, expanding and complicating how musical texts make meaning as musicals. The anthology's remarkable selection of scholars examines generic outliers-like rockumentaries, dance-focused films, televised lip-synching contests, Bollywood "song picturization," and short-form pop music film-demonstrating how methodologies developed by canonical musical scholars like Rick Altman and Jane Feuer continue to inform contemporary scholarship. As the boundaries between genres, media platforms, and audiences become increasingly difficult to parse, Shearer and Wright's collection is a much-needed addition to the existing literature on the musical, and the field of genre theory as a whole." -- Amanda Ann Klein, Associate Professor of Film Studies, East Carolina University, USA

Promotional "Headline"

Explores the films and media texts, cycles, and sequences situated at the margins and boundaries of the musical genre across a range of media, time periods, and global contexts, illustrating a need for a broader and more flexible approach to both this specific genre and film genres in general.

Feature

Challenges existing theorisations of the musical and calls for a broader, more flexible approach to the study of genre

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